Creative, Intelligent, Playful Dolphins!

They teach each other to do this. Amazing and wonderful!

Also see the Dolphin Bubble Ring Sculpture Gallery of Photos. (And, if you're interested, Project Delphis is a conservation effort to save wild dolphins.) Very interesting too, is "Evidence of self-awareness in the bottlenose dolphin," from Project Delphis


Dolphin Play Bubble Rings

From the post at metacafe:

"When you spend your life in the water, I guess you tend to develop a good intuition for its subtleties. Dolphins have been observed to create bubble rings by exhaling air...carefully in the middle of the vortices caused by the motion of their fins through the water, among other techniques.

"Besides being nice to look at (and a neat demonstration of fluid mechanics), this phenomenon also might throw some light on dolphin cognition, since the skill to create the rings is a bit subtle and tends to be taught from one dolphin to the next via careful observation and practice. I'm also intrigued by the report that they seem to be using sonar to locate the vortex in the water, since that would be a fairly amazing bit of audio analysis. This video is dedicated to the best employee at Sea World."

And I couldn't pass up including this wonderful whale photo:

My wonderful friend Susan Paul has passed.

Postscript: Rick asked us to put her video up on a website for him.

I attended the funeral for a friend and former dance student named Susan Paul. She was just 46, and died of liver cancer "of unknown primary origin." (She blogged about it here.) Her husband Rick asked us to put up the video from her service on a website. You can see her video on susanpaulzedra.com here.



What a woman!

A lawyer (yes, a lawyer named "Sue," nice aptonym) she was also a belly dancer who performed in many Guild of Oriental Dance shows, including one student piece I choreographed a few years ago. She was also an avid biker and made annual sojourns to Sturgis--you should see her bike!

She raised alpacas, llamas, and dogs on her hobby farm, and loved knitting so much she gave up her law practice and bought a yarn shop a couple of years ago.

It's very tough on everyone who knew this vibrant woman, but of course, most of all, for her husband Rick. My thoughts and prayers are with him.

I wrote a Rumi quote in the card to him:
"This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet."


At the luncheon following the funeral, I met a dancer who said, "aren't you the one that has the blog, 'Notes From Sarah?'" Shocked, I said yes, and she said, "You need to update it more often." Of course she's right--and now I am. Finally.